International Record Review
'All of the soloists are generally outstanding. Nicholas Mulroy’s lithe, sensitive Evangelist is the epitome of narrative clarity and contrasts beautifully with the calming, authoritative richness of Matthew Brook’s Jesus.'
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MusicWeb International
Recording of the Month: 'I will not be surprised if this recording of the St. John Passion comes to be regarded as a landmark in the work's already distinguished discography.'
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Gramophone
'As the Dunedin Consort record Bach's St John Passion in the context of a Good Friday vespers, David Vickers speaks to John Butt and others about the rewards of liturgical reconstruction.'
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John Passion - Dunedin Consort - MusicWeb International

14 March 2013MusicWeb InternationalBrian Wilson

Until recently the status of John Eliot Gardiner's recordings of the Bach Passions, Christmas Oratorio and b-minor Mass (DG - see below) was unassailed. John Butt and the Dunedin Consort on Linn challenged the hegemony of Gardiner's Matthew Passion a couple of years ago and now they've done it again with the John Passion. That's an even bigger plus for me because, though it's impossible to choose between two such mighty masterpieces, I tend slightly more towards the St John.

Not only is this an exceptionally fine small-scale performance and recording with scholarly but readable notes, it attempts to bring us closer to the way in which the original listeners experienced the passion on Good Friday - not a particular Good Friday because it's a composite of the various revisions, though as close as possible to the projected 1739 version - but with material from the Lutheran Vespers service as celebrated at Leipzig in the early 18th century.

I'm not going to get into the debate about one-to-a-part singing of Bach, merely to say that there is strong evidence to support it and that it works very well here. I said that I had no criticism to offer, but there's one small point which I ought to raise: Ecce quodmodo moritur follows a little too hard on the heels of the end of Bach's final chorale.